It’s the most wonderful time of the year – your ANOCs delivered, your EOC posted and Open Enrollment complete. It’s my hope that this truly is the most wonderful time of the year for you, but I also have to ask, how did document creation go this year when it comes to your Annual Notice of Change (ANOC) and Evidence of Coverage (EOC) documents?
Let’s take a look back to see how the season took shape.
The models were late and I mean really, really late. Although initial bids were submitted on June 3rd, the 2025 models didn’t arrive until June 12th. For those teams that established a schedule around document creation, this caused issues before things even got started.
And we can’t forget the Tukey calculations and the chaos that resulted with Star Ratings. Tukey recalculations in June resulted in an option for plans seeing an increase to their overall Star Rating, which generally results in a health plan collecting more money – but it came with a catch. Plans had to resubmit bids and they had little time to decide to do so and then get it done. Plans that decided to capitalize on the opportunity likely lost sleep during those days as they adjusted the bid and the plans who made the choice not to resubmit, passed on additional funding. Neither decision was easy and both came with lasting consequences.
If you’re someone who works with this content and the bid over the summer, you’re likely of the opinion that you want to do whatever you can to limit additional stress on a schedule you already can’t control. And so, my real questions are, were you prepared as you could be? Were you able to be nimble and make adjustments?
Best tips to be prepared for delays or resubmissions that you can’t control.
- Understand your schedule needs to be nimble. This doesn’t mean you can’t start if the models are late, it might instead suggest you switch your focus. A possible switch could be to review the benefit language your plan intends to change or needs to add based on your bid submission. You could also review contact information, ensuring addresses, phone numbers and URLs are accurate. Working on this ahead of the model updates may allow you to recoup some of the time lost as a result of late models.
- Review your plan content ahead of the season. This is likely more important than the first suggestion. Are you managing your plans as efficiently as you can? Whether or not you are creating your documents with technology or editing Word documents, it’s easy to have a plan or group of plans use slightly different language to say the same thing.
- Compare plans and evaluate differences. Ask yourself, is that difference required, or can the two plans use the same language? This task is easiest when you pick one plan to compare all other plans too. It’s best to do this in like plan types, but there are enough areas of similar content from plan type to plan type where this could be beneficial.
- Determine content that can be discussed ahead of the season. Many times, there are changes to plans that are known ahead of models dropping. Obvious changes are benefits – and if you can, we suggest identifying benefits that are changing that require language changes. Working on ANOC language ahead of the season is always a benefit, as is thinking through what needs to change in various benefit charts. Of course, it’s possible one or more of those changes won’t go through, but we believe it’s beneficial to complete this exercise as you may save time in the long run.
Of course, we believe the best advice we can offer is to partner with us! At Toppan Merrill we take care of managing the models year over year, taking that pressure off you. We also watch for any updates to content coming from the corrections memo later in the season or updated models or both if that happens.
We have years of experience in this market and understand the need to be nimble. We also know the value of using your bid information to populate these materials and create them in the format your members request.
How Toppan Merrill Can Help
Toppan Merrill helps Medicare Advantage Plans prepare annual member-facing and marketing materials each year, so your sales force and members have the necessary resources. Our team is an expert when it comes to managing model content and ensuring your benefits are properly represented. We’d love to talk to you about our approach and how we can partner with you.
